Step into the lab: Como’s living room shows how technology can change players’ games

When the PGA TOUR season – and much of the globe – came screeching to a halt because of the coronavirus pandemic, Chris Como had one request. He told his realtor that he needed a house with a large living room and high ceilings. This wasn’t a decision about acoustics or interior design. Como, one of the game’s most innovative instructors, wanted to build something unprecedented. He created a unique space that’s served as a catalyst for the transformation that has captivated the golf world. While sales of at-home training aids skyrocketed during the pandemic, Como took it to another level. He loaded his new home in the Dallas area with thousands of dollars’ worth of gadgets that would make any golf academy green with envy. There’s also a squat rack, free weights, a basketball net and hockey goal in the living room. “It’s like a golf bachelor pad,” said University of Texas junior Pierceson Coody, the world’s 16th-ranked amateur and a longtime student of Como’s. It’s not all for fun and games, though. The room has an austere aesthetic, with bare, brown walls and windows covered in protective foam. That’s because Como’s Living Room Lab, as it’s been termed, is the site of serious study. It’s golf’s version of DriveLine, the high-tech baseball training facility that started in a Seattle warehouse and has transformed the game at the highest level. Como’s new home in Frisco, Texas, is where Bryson DeChambeau continued his evolution into a brawny bomber when courses in Dallas were closed. “Having a place to practice in quarantine was nice. When everybody was shut down, I was still able to go over (to Como’s) and hit shots and do some work,” said DeChambeau, who showcased dramatic increases in strength and speed when the TOUR season resumed. He leads the TOUR in driving distance and recently won the Rocket Mortgage Classic. Fellow PGA TOUR player Emiliano Grillo, another of Como’s students, also has stepped into the lab. Grillo finished T3 in last week’s 3M Open. Stars from other sports have visited Como’s house, as well, including former NBA All-Star Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway, who’s now the head coach at the University of Memphis; the Dallas Mavericks’ Seth Curry (Steph’s brother) and Dallas Stars captain Jamie Benn. Como gives them golf lessons and analyzes the movements integral to their respective sports. He wants to learn how athletes generate power when shooting a slap shot, or dunking a basketball, and apply those learnings to the golf swing. “(Chris) thinks differently than a lot of people,” said former Masters champion and current CBS broadcaster Trevor Immelman, a longtime friend and student. “He just like to go down paths and see where it leads him. He just likes to keep working and keep researching to see what he can figure out. He’s just a very inquisitive person. “He just had an inkling things would be shut down for awhile and he wanted to find a way to keep working and keep experimenting.” His search for answers has made Como one of the game’s leading instructors. He studied under many of golf instruction’s biggest names before breaking out on his own. He was the youngest instructor named to Golf’s Top 100 list and hosts two shows on Golf Channel. He consulted with Tiger Woods during the early stages of Woods’ latest comeback, and now coaches DeChambeau (along with DeChambeau’s longtime coach, Mike Schy), Immelman, Coody (and his twin brother, Parker, who also plays for Texas), Grillo and Jamie Lovemark. Como also is the Director of Instruction at Dallas National Golf Club. The gadgets in Como’s living room allow him to measure things that were once invisible. Guesswork has been replaced with objectivity. He quickly loaded his new residence with a Gears 3D Motion Capture, GASP force plates and a K-Vest, as well as high-speed cameras and launch monitors. Design 2 Golf helped assemble the setup. Such technology is available in biomechanics laboratories and a handful of golf academies, but they’ve never been installed in a suburban subdivision. A video camera used to be an instructor’s most important piece of technology, but that only offered a two-dimensional view of a complex motion. Trackman was the first tool that gave players and teachers a view into the important, but imperceptible, occurrences at impact. Now technology — such as 3D motion capture and force plates — give teachers objective measurement of things that are invisible to the human eye. The 3D motion capture system provides a clear picture of a player’s movement at any point in the swing. Gears captures more than 600 images per swing, and tracks both the club’s grip and head. Force plates measure how much force a player is putting into the ground, and where that force is being applied at different points in the swing. Being able to objectively measure more aspects of the golf swing has led to less conformity in instruction, not more. A swing’s aesthetics have taken a backseat to physics. “I think instruction is more focused on what matters now. We’ve learned that (the swing) is not about putting the club in certain positions. It’s more about dynamic movements and forces and torques that act on the club,” said TOUR player Charles Howell III, who works with instructor Dana Dahlquist. “We can measure things better and there’s more smart people in golf instruction now more than ever. The cool thing is I think they’re asking better questions, which is what matters.” Justin Rose used the technology to make changes that were crucial to his FedExCup-winning season of 2018. Rose recently split with swing coach Sean Foley to become more self-guided, but they used the technology to make swing adjustments that alleviated back pain. This technology gives objective measurements that differentiate between “feel” and “real.” For Rose, it was enlightening to see that what he thought was an exaggerated movement only resulted in a minor change. “What you see when things are measured three-dimensionally, the data that comes out of it, it doesn’t translate when you see it through an iPhone,” Rose said. “It was really interesting to me how much I had to feel something to make the correct move.” Some eschew such technology for fear of information overload. Others enjoy being able to quantify what is otherwise unknowable. Pierceson Coody, for example, doesn’t look at the information. He relies on Como to distill it to its simplest form. DeChambeau, on the other hand, desires it. He can analyze how a swing thought will impact his actual motion, allowing a trial-and-error process that helps him find the right cues. “I try a lot of different things, and 99.9% of them don’t work, but it’s great information to have so we know what doesn’t work and when we find that little nugget, it’s special. It’s very special,” he said. “That’s how you gain an edge out here, when you find these little things that can make all the difference for repeatability, for speed, whatever it may be that you’re trying to accomplish. “Even through quarantine as I gained speed, I figured out some cool little things that allowed me to repeat motion a little more consistently.” DeChambeau not only leads the PGA TOUR in driving distance but had a stretch of seven consecutive top-10s that was capped with his win at the Rocket Mortgage Classic. He finished in the top 10 in all four starts after the TOUR season resumed, thanks in part to his time spent in Como’s lab. They were able to find a way to create incredible clubhead speed while maintaining enough control to keep the ball in play. “We’ve done a lot of work on how to control the face while creating so much speed,” Como said. “The force plates were great for understanding some of the physics of how to create more speed and Gears has been great for measuring the clubface throughout the swing. Bryson wants to know what changes from a forces perspective based on what he is thinking. He can objectively measure what those cues are actually creating in his swing.” And how they’re changing the game.

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